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PSYCHO-PHONE 

MESSAGES 









RECORDED BY 

FRANCIS GRIERSON 

■! i» - ■' ' '■■ ■ ■ " » ' . ■ ' ■' i ■ ■ »■ 

Spiritual Messages from the late 
General U. S. Grant, on Adequate 
Preparation in America; Thomas Jef- 
ferson, on the Future of American De- 
mocracy; Benjamin Disraeli, on English 
and Irish Affairs ; Prince Bismarck, on 
the Indemnities ; John Marshall, on the 
Psychology of the Supreme Court of 
the United States; Alexander Hamil- 
ton, on the Forces that Precede Revo- 
lution ; Abraham Lincoln, on the Future 
of Mexico; Robert Ingersoll, on Our 
Great Women; Henry Ward Beecher, 
on the New Puritanism; Benjamin 
Wade, of Ohio, on President Harding ; 
General B. H. Grierson, on Japan, 
Mexico and California, etc. 






PSYCHO-PHONE 
MESSAGES 



RECORDED BY 

FRANCIS GRIERSON 



Published by 

AUSTIN PUBLISHING COMPANY 

Los Angeles, California 






,6 



■s& 



Copyright, June 1921 
By B. F. Austin 



JUN 16(921 
©CLA62210B 



INTRODUCTION 

The word "psycho-phone" was first sug- 
gested and used by Mr. Francis Grierson in a 
lecture I heard him deliver before the Toron- 
to Theosophical Society, August 31st, 1919, 
a year before Thomas Edison announced his 
intention of devising an instrument which he 
hopes will serve to establish intercourse be- 
tween our world and the world of spirit. 

My own experiences as a student in this 
sphere of psychic research in Europe and 
America, covering a period of thirty years, 
convince me that we have here a revelation 
of a new mode of spiritual communication un- 
like anything heretofore given to the world, 
not only different in quality but different in 
purpose. 

From personal knowledge I can state that 
the recorder of these messages has not acted 
on ideas advanced by anyone living on our 
plane. 



Looking back over the past two decades, I 
am led to believe that Mr. Grierson's predic- 
tions in "The Invincible Alliance," and in that 
startling poem, 'The Awakening in West- 
minster Abbey," forecasting the war and the 
tragic events in Ireland, were spiritual and 
psycho-phonic in character. 

From 1909 to 1911 Francis Grierson was 
the acknowledged leading writer on "The 
New Age," of London, which at that time 
had as contributors, H. G. Wells, Bernard 
Shaw, Arnold Bennett, the two Chestertons, 
Hillaire Belloc — in one word, all the most 
prominent writers and advanced thinkers in 
Britain, yet not one of them except Mr. Grier- 
son could see the approaching world up- 
heaval. 

Early in 1909 he published a series of arti- 
cles in that weekly depicting the coming war, 
and nothing of so drastic a nature had ever 
appeared in an English publication. In the 
spring of 1913 these articles were published 
in book form in London and New York under 
the title of "The Invincible Alliance." 

In the Westminster Abbey composition, 
published in "The New Age" in 1910, the 



characteristics of four personalities are 
plainly manifest — Coleridge, Milton, Shelley 
and Shakespeare — and I have not forgotten 
the sensation caused by this great work in 
London at the time of its appearance. 

Having had occasion to study the social 
and psychic conditions in France, Germany, 
Italy, Austria and England before the great 
war, and after having been an eye witness of 
scenes unique in the annals of musical inspir- 
ation in the artistic and literary circles of 
Europe as well as the most intellectual of 
the royal courts, in which Mr. Grierson was 
the central figure, I now have a better under- 
standing of the work he accomplished and its 
far-reaching import. The more complex the 
work the longer must be the preparation, and 
we are now confronted with what will appear 
to many as the most interesting phase of 
Mr. Grierson's psychic gifts, for the seer who 
ushered in the new mystical movement by the 
publication of "Modern Mysticism" in 1899 
is now the recorder of messages which must 
induce thinking and unprejudiced minds to 
pause and consider such matters in a new 
light, and it is to be hoped that many more 



messages like these may be recorded by the 
same hand. 

As I write, I have before me a unique col- 
lection of letters written to Mr. Grierson by 
men and women eminent in philosophy, art, 
music, literature and journalism, in Europe 
and America. Among the letters that Mr. 
Grierson values the most in this remarkable 
album are eight from members of the French 
Academy, with Sully Prudhomme, winner of 
the first Noble Prize, heading the list. Which 
reminds me that I heard him say one evening 
in Paris, after hearing Mr. Grierson's music: 
"You have placed me on the threshold of the 
other world. There are not words in the 
French language to express what I have felt 
tonight!" Up to that moment the famous 
Academician had been known as an avowed 
agnostic. 

Maeterlinck writes that the first Grierson 
volume (in French) influenced him more than 
any book he had ever read. There are four 
letters from the Belgian mystic. 

This album is filled with expressions from 
the most authoritative minds in literature 
and art, as well as statesmen, soldiers and dip- 



lomats, such as Jules Simon, the Due de 
Broglie, Lord Lytton, British ambassador at 
Paris; Lord Reading, British ambassador at 
Washington; Field Marshall Lord Wolseley, 
General B. H. Grierson, U.S.A., leading mem- 
bers of the Bonaparte family in Paris, Prince 
Henri of Orleans (son of Louis Philippe), 
Princess Eulalia of Spain, and crowned heads 
who gave receptions in Mr. Grierson's honor 
during the past thirty years. There are let- 
ters from distinguished Americans, such as 
Col. Henry Watterson (who wrote two long 
editorials on Mr. Grierson in the Louisville 
"Courier Journal"), Henry Mills Alden, 
editor of "Harper's Monthly," Prof. Will- 
iam James, Marion Reedy, Edwin Mark- 
ham, Edith Thomas, Mary Austin, and many 
leading professors of Harvard, Yale, Colum- 
bia, Cornell, the Universities of Illinois, Wis- 
consin and California. 

Edwin Bjorkman says, in hfs "Voices of 
Tomorrow" : — 

"To Francis Grierson belongs the honor of 
having first attained to prophetic vision of 
the common goal. In his first volume, publish- 
ed in Paris in 1889, he suggested every idea 



which since then has become recognized as 
essential not only to Bergson and Maeter- 
linck but to the constanty increasing number 
of writers engaged in making the time con- 
scious of its own spirit. As we read essay af- 
ter essay it is as if we beheld the globe of life 
revolving slowly between us and some un- 
known source of light." 

The following remarks from the London 
"Outlook" seem to me pertinent to the sub- 
ject: — 

"Grierson is an Englishman, for he was 
born in Cheshire; Scotland may justly claim 
him in that he is a direct descendent of Sir 
Robert Grierson, the famous Laird of Lag, 
who is the hero of Scott's novel, The Red 
Gauntlet'; that America has had a part in the 
making of him all readers of that wonderful 
book, 'The Valley of Shadows,' know; France 
can claim him since he began his musical ca- 
reer in Paris and published his first book in 
French; but no special country can claim to 
have developed his genius — that is cosmopoli- 
tan." 

As "Current Opinion" says, in a long 
study : "He presents a unique combination of 



thinker, writer, artist and musician who owes 
nothing to any school or any master or sys- 
tem of training; and his experience is with- 
out a parallel in the intellectual world of our 
day." 

LAWRENCE WALDEMAR TONNER, 

245y 2 So. Spring St. 

Los Angeles, California. 



FOREWORD 

These messages were begun in September, 
1920, and the last was recorded in May, 1921. 
I little dreamed that many of the predictions 
set forth would be verified so soon. For 
names, in themselves, count for nothing. The 
subliminal mind may assume different names 
on different occasions. A message is of value 
exactly in proportion to the information im- 
parted. 

The first communication from General 
Grant was recorded September ninth. It is 
peremptory in tone, and contains a warning 
touching the insecurity of the Panama Canal. 
In November Mr. Harding made a tour of in- 
spection and found the fortifications of the 
Canal inadequate. I then decided on the pub- 
lication of these messages. 

They deal with the actual Take, for exam- 
ple, John Marshall's documents, which are 
filled with warnings no reader with intelli- 
gence will attempt to refute, Disraeli's indict- 
ment of English statesmanship in recent 



times, Lincoln's utterances on affairs in Eu- 
rope and Mexico, General Grant on Prepara- 
tion, Benjamin Franklin on the Privilege of 
Liberty, Bishop Phillips Brooks on the Com- 
ing Ordeals, to name but a few. 

As a Judge sums up, regardless of who may 
or may not agree, a decision is rendered ac- 
cording to the vision of the one who delivers 
the message. Principle, not Party, is the basis 
of judgment. 

Witness Disraeli's remark that the blun- 
ders committed by the British Parliament 
would have been impossible in an Irish Par- 
liament in Dublin. 

In a series of articles in "Nash's Maga- 
zine" Mr. Basil King suggests that "the 
means of communication with the plane next 
above us may be through the everlasting 
doors which the subliminal opens upward. 
Through these doors the mind may go up and 
out; through these doors the light may come 
in and down." 

In our group of investigators we have had 
the perseverence essential for serious devel- 
opment, and, as in all demonstrations, 
whether physical or psychical, everything de- 



pends on conditions, so we have had periods 
of weeks when no message of any kind was 
received. 

A striking feature of these communications 
is their freedom from restraint imposed by 
popular opinion. They contain neither the- 
ories nor appeals. Warnings are uttered con- 
cerning events and their inevitable reactions. 
The psycho-phonic waves, by which the 
messages are imparted, are as definite as 
those received by wireless methods. 

FRANCIS GRIERSON. 

Los Angeles, California 



CONTENTS 

PAGE 

Introduction 5 

Foreword 13 

Thomas Reed, of Maine, Late Speaker of 

the House, on the Peace League 21 

General U. S. Grant, on Adequate Prep- 
aration in America 24 

General U. S. Grant (second message) 27 

Thomas Jefferson, on the Future of 

American Democracy 30 

Elizabeth Cady Stanton, on the Future 

of American Women 33 

Benjamin Franklin, on the Privilege of 

Liberty 43 

John Marshall, "The Expounder of the 
Constitution, on the Psychology of 
the Supreme Court 46 

Daniel Webster, on "Bohemian" States- 
men 47 

Oliver Wendell Holmes, on the New Eden .... 49 



Benjamin Wade, Late Governor of Ohio, 

U. S. Senator, on President Harding 51 

Bon Piatt, Late Editor of "The Capital," 
Washington, D. C., on Prohibition and 
the Blue Laws 55 

Benjamin Disraeli, on English and Irish 

Affairs 58 

Prince Bismarck, en Germany and the 

Indemnities 63 

Henry Ward Beecher, on the New Puri- 
tanism 70 

John Marshall, on Liberty and the League 

(second message) 74 

Abraham Lincoln, on the Future of Mex- 
ico 79 

Robert Ingersoll, on Our Great Women 82 

Stephen A. Douglass, on War Between 

England and America 83 

General B. H. Grierson, on Japan and 

California 85 

Alexander Hamilton, on the Forces that 

Precede Revolution 89 

Phillips Brooks, on The Coming Ordeals 93 



Psycho-phone Messages 



THOMAS B. REED 

(Late Speaker of the House) 
Recorded September seventh, 1920. 

The formidable imbecility of the Senate 
rivaled the fantastic irritability of the Presi- 
dent. 

Born with a Utopian temperament, Mr. Wil- 
son has a Herculean passion for generalities 
and a Lilliputian penchant for details. 

You scratched the Teutons at Versailles 
and found a new species of Tartar; you 
scratched the Japanese and found a Paci- 
fist camouflage; you scratched the Poles and 
found a pianist with his hair uncut; you 
scratched the French and found a tiger with 
his claws undipped. Your mania for scratch- 
ing other nations will keep your nails mani- 
cured without the aid of scissors. 

Never since the Declaration of Independ- 
ence and the first peal of the Liberty Bell 
did a chief executive walk up a winding stair 



22 PSYCHO-PHONE MESSAGES 

into so pretty a parlor as when Mr. Wilson, 
with the naivete of a Princeton president, 
faced that cacophony of sectional jazz bands 
to witness the cryptic hand-writing on the 
wall at the peace table. Who was his adviser? 
Was it a gentleman with owl spectacles from 
the oil fields of Texas? And was there no one 
who could have cautioned him against the 
finesse of Clemenceau who spent sixty years 
sharpening his wits on the political grind- 
stone of Europe? Was no one in America 
aware that the French Premier is a fluent 
speaker in English? 

Mr. Wilson could speak no French, which 
reminds me that Jack Spratt could eat no fat 
and his wife could eat no lean, and so betwixt 
them both they licked the platter clean. But 
a clean plate does not mean a clean slate, and 
the President brought one home filled with 
the riddle of the Sphinx. Yet the Peace Con- 
ference revealed the secret of perpetual mo- 
tion and conferred a timely service, for the 
hubbub created by the Wilson-Lansing- 
House-Party at Versailles kept the Senate 
from passing into a trance. 



PSYCHO-PHONE MESSAGES 23 

A blind man can tell the difference between 
pepper pods and apple dumplings, but who 
can tell where tweedle-dee ends and tweedle- 
dum begins? No one. Then how can your 
statesmen distinguish between the psycho- 
logical characteristics of the Hungarians and 
the Bohemians, the Bavarians and the Sax- 
ons, the difference between a polka and a 
polonaise, a pig in a stye and a pig in a 
slaughter house? 

Patriotism often depends on an influence 
too subtle for analysis, and yet they would 
enact drastic laws to bind all Europe in one 
bond. They will hardly succeed in a thousand 
years. 

Some pay through the nose, some through 
the pocket and some through the stomach. 
Americans are paying through all three. 
Danton declared the secret of the French 
Revolution was audacity, and audacity, and 
again audacity, but what you need today is 
vigilance repeated ad infinitum. 

I am placing you in communication with 
some of the most far-reaching minds of the 
past hundred and fifty years. The psycho- 
phone is new and we are using it for the first 
time. 



THE LATE GENERAL U. S. GRANT 
Recorded September Ninth, 1920 

The imbroglio started by President Car- 
ranza is beginning to influence the politicians 
of Buenos Ayres and other centers in South 
America. They have secretly repudiated 
the Monroe Doctrine. Their next maneuver 
will be a public repudiation. 

I would say to Congress, stop juggling with 
phrases and attend to the business of the 
hour. The majority have been chasing shad- 
ows in a sphere of politics illumined by moon- 
shine bottled in the Blue Ridge. I was more 
careful of my brand. When President Lin- 
coln asked for the label, so he could recom- 
mend it to other generals, he was not far 
wrong in his surmises. It is not so much the 
thing as the quality that counts. Most of you 
at Washington will have to learn the differ- 
ence between inhibition and prohibition. 

The United States will be isolated within 
three years frorc this date if the blowhards 



PSYCHO-PHONE MESSAGES 25 

from the woolly constituencies are not sup- 
pressed. You need a broncho buster in the 
Senate and a donkey muzzier in the House. 

When a boycott is started by the countries 
south of the Union your enemies in Europe 
will begin to act. It is not a question of com- 
merce but of common sense. I repeat what 
Lincoln said in 1862: "The times are dark 
and the spirits of ruin are abroad in all their 
power." 

My message to Congress is : See that fifty 
thousand troops are stationed permanently 
near the District of Columbia. 

My message to the Governors of New York, 
Pennsylvania and Illinois is : Get ready ! The 
troops on the borders of Texas, New Mexico 
and Arizona are inadequate. The fortifica- 
tions of the Panama and at San Diego and 
San Pedro are inadequate. You are in the 
same condition the French were in previous to 
1789, when the motto was, "After us the 
Deluge." The Deluge came but it did not con- 
sist of water. 

Our foes of the old Germany and the new 
Russia count on crippling the United States 
through South America, with the aid of 



26 PSYCHO-PHONE MESSAGES 

Japan ; but he who delivers the first blow will 
be the victor. 

The Germans still believe they can event- 
ually invade France, enter Paris and cause 
a revolution, found a new empire to include 
France, Belgium, Holland and Switzerland, 
with Italy later on. This dream includes a 
practical understanding with Soviet Russia, 
which, by that time, they expect would be 
weary of futile experiments. Plots will be ex- 
posed that will make it apparent how vain 
some of your optimistic surmises have been. 
Diplomats who are not psychologists will be 
balked by developments in Switzerland, that 
nation having become the rendezvous of dis- 
illusioned wire-pullers without a country. 

You are now at the cross roads. Take the 
wrong turning and you will come to the skull 
and cross bones. 

I could say much more but we are not yet 
experts in this new mode of inter-communi- 
cation and must be brief. 



GENERAL U. S. GRANT. 

(Second Message) 
Recorded May Third, 1921 

I concur with Alexander Stephens when he 
says: "Congress has never been so supine 
and so serpentine." 

Millions are sent to the people of distant 
countries in no way related to our Govern- 
ment or people, and yet Congress permits 
thousands of veterans of the great war to 
continue in a state of neglect, suffering and 
humiliation. 

Do the authorities believe that when the 
day of trial arrives the friends and relatives 
of these veterans will hurry to volunteer for 
active service? The country is being fasci- 
nated by incidents and events in far-off re- 
gions, and the tragic conditions at home have 
entered a chronic stage. 

There are too many old men in Congress — 
men who never did more than fight grasshop- 
pers or watch a game of football from re- 
served seats. 



28 PSYCHO-PHONE MESSAGES 

We do not like the looks of the President's 
pronunciamento. It contains too many side 
issues. He is making Mr. Wilson's mistake 
of being verbose. Mr. Wilson tried to hypno- 
tize Europe; the Senate is trying to hypno- 
tize Mr. Harding. Popularity breeds as much 
contempt as familiarity. No President can 
ever succeed in conciliatng all classes, sec- 
tions and parties. 

The politicians of Buenos Ayres have now 
spoken as I predicted in my first message. 
They have attacked Mr. Harding for his 
speech on Pan-Americanism, all which goes 
to prove that the President is repeating for 
South America Mr. Wilson's blunders in 
France. 

Remember what Lincoln said to Judge 
Whitney : — 

"Those fellows think I don't see anything, 
but I see all around them. I see better what 
they want to do with me than they do them- 
selves." 

The politicians of South America see bet- 
ter what the President wants to do with 
them than he does himself. 



PSYCHO-PHONE MESSAGES 29 

The administration will face a critical pe- 
riod in the early fall. There will be a break 
in the dominant phalanx. A social and poli- 
tical readjustment will compel mediation in 
quarters the most unexpected. 

The new political and commercial dispensa- 
tion for the English-speaking countries will 
begin on September twenty-second at two 
P.M. 



THOMAS JEFFERSON 

Few politicians understand the difference 
between scene-shifting and progress. Things 
shift, new names are applied, but the vicious 
circle continues. 

I see no evidence that human nature has 
changed since my time, in this or any other 
country. 

If the Republican Ship of State is leaking, 
the Democratic craft is drifting without sail 
or rudder. What your statesmen fail to un- 
derstand is that progress is not induced by 
force but by free will. New political planks 
rammed into your platforms against the 
wishes of the majority are without signifi- 
cance. The phrase, "The Solid South," which 
meant something vital at one time, has no 
meaning in these days of quick change and 
movie-show influences. 

Democracy, in some sections, is a matter 
of climate. If you have come to a point where 
science and sentimentality are engaged in a 



PSYCHO-PHONE MESSAGES 31 

drastic war, then the Democratic phalanx 
must undergo some rude changes. 

The Democratic tail wagged the Republi- 
can dog for some time, but that curious spec- 
tacle has lost its hold on public interest. It is 
not now a question of one end wagging the 
other, but who will wag both. If Republicans 
stand for crude force, and Democrats for an- 
te-bellum sentimentality, both are doomed to- 
gether. 

In the South, Democracy means politics at 
the polls, aristocracy in the parlor. In the 
North, Republicanism means the aristocracy 
of wealth. 

However, your conception of social equal- 
ity is undergoing modification. 

In Washington's time the slogan was revo- 
lution; in Lincoln's time it was abolition; in 
your time it is prohibition, which reminds me 
that laws passed in haste bring long periods 
of repentance. 

Effective effrontery is the result of cour- 
ageous ignorance, for millions are more easily 
influenced by illusive promises than by the 
lessons of experience. 



32 PSYCHO-PHONE MESSAGES 



Modern civilization has hurried to meet 
four deadly things — riches, pleasures, mate- 
rialism and war. But the tortoise is a better 
example of progress than the hare fleeing be- 
fore the greyhound. 



ELIZABETH CADY STANTON 

It appalls the normal mind to stop and con- 
sider the criminal blunders made by the edu- 
cated Prussian and the educated Englishman 
prior to 1914. No statesman had the vision 
to see what was going to happen to the man- 
made world. 

Since it is a question of intuition and feel- 
ing versus cold reason and business logic, let 
us see which side is the more vital and all-en- 
during. Let us consider for a brief space 
what it is that influences people. Let us con- 
sider the influence exerted by the arts. What 
is music? Emotion created by sound vibra- 
tions. What is dramatic acting? Emotion 
created by vocal vibrations combined with 
gesture and physical movement. Has anyone 
ever witnessed automatic acting that left a 
profound impression? 

Orators become famous when they unite 
deep feeling with knowledge. But what gives 
expression? The power of awakening emotion 



34 PSYCHO-PHONE MESSAGES 

in others. Feeling is always more convincing 
than intellect. Intellect is full of theories, 
notions and superstitions. But where you find 
deep feeling combined with knowledge, you 
will find reason directed by qualities which 
pass through the surface and attain the 
heart-throbs of the real. 

There are many kinds of emotion. There 
is the hard emotion of anger, the confused 
emotion of fear, the painful emotion of jeal- 
ousy, the indescribable emotion of despair, 
the radiant emotion of joy. But the greatest 
emotion of all is that of knowledge united to 
feeling. 

Men, as a rule, speak of emotion as a weak- 
ness, and they confuse it with impulse — a 
very different thing. Impulse is often the re- 
sult of weak nerves, uncontrolled by the will; 
but we must not confuse it with the emotional 
quality which underlies all great achieve- 
ment in art, literature, philosophy and per- 
sonality. The more impulsive the individual 
is, the more primitive the reasoning faculty. 

English and American business men are 
limited in general knowledge. I have never 
been able to discover any distinctive differ- 



PSYCHO-PHONE MESSAGES 35 

ence between the two. In France and Italy 
many business men are able to discuss art, 
literature and music on the same level with 
the masters, The Latin races and the Celtic 
races possess a culture that can be traced 
back for two or three thousand years, but 
Anglo-Saxon culture only to the time of the 
Saxon invasion. The Anglo-Saxons were the 
mushrooms of our civilization. They were a 
stolid business people who lacked creative 
genius. 

The outstanding intellect of England today 
is Celtic. The Scotch, the Irish and the Welsh 
combine emotion and power with tenacity of 
purpose, and it is this Celtic element that 
keeps America in the front rank of nations. 

What women have been opposing is the 
primitive monotony of the Anglo-Saxon 
trend. It has meant a mixture of politics and 
commerce so primitive and so naive that 
Frenchmen are amazed when they visit 
America and note the striking difference be- 
tween the culture of the women and the men- 
tality of the average man. 

One of your great mystics has said : "The 
chemical constituents of human bodies is the 
same. The ashes of a saint and the ashes of 



36 PSYCHO-PHONE MESSAGES 

a sinner give the same chemical results. As 
human bodies they are the same, but their 
functions separate them and make them to- 
tally different, so that the difference cannot 
by any hocus-pocus of metaphysics or magic 
be bridged or spanned." 

Two things of the same material are really 
different if their functions are different. The 
real substance of a thing is in its function. 
We have to judge people by the things they 
do, not by their appearance; for there is no 
clear understanding between two persons 
whose aims are different. This is why there 
are so many divorces. This is why so many 
intellectual women live separate lives from 
their husbands in the same house. 

People seem to be similar and equal but 
they differ according to their functions. If we 
take a philosopher, a hangman and a sailor 
who appear to be equal as human beings we 
shall see that in their functions there is 
nothing in common. The souls of these men 
are different in the very nature, origin and 
purpose of their existence. 

Thousands of people move in a world of ma- 
terial shadows while their souls, the sub- 



PSYCHO-PHONE MESSAGES 37 

stance of which is intellectual and spiritual, 
inhabit a sphere absolutely apart. Especially 
is this the case with many of the cultured 
women of our time who are compelled to live 
a double life. Their intellects are far removed 
from the ordinary pursuits of the commercial 
world. 

A woman of spiritual culture who marries 
a commercial man has married a shadow. A 
woman of high ideals who marries a profes- 
sional politician has hitched her motor car to 
a meteor. A romantic woman married to a 
multi-millionaire whose world is bound in 
liberty bonds loses her liberty. A metaphysi- 
cal woman who marries a financier is handi- 
capped by the physical. 

A union of spiritual functions with mate- 
rial formulas is impossible, for there is no 
way in which mere sensation can be made to 
harmonize with the higher emotions. 

The new era of woman, which is just be- 
ginning to dawn, will direct education; and 
through education, politics; through politics, 
the progress of nations. Heretofore, the com- 
mercial and political world had a free hand. 
The progressive element was confined to a 



38 PSYCHO-PHONE MESSAGES 

limited number of men in the colleges and the 
ministry, together with a remnant of law- 
makers. But their influence was negative 
owing to lack of material support. 

Women will now present a formidable force 
in numbers, backed by a spiritual power, aid- 
ed by men who understand the difference 
between functions and appearance, sensuous 
desires and ideal emotions. 

For years I maintained that women do not 
realize the power they possess. They live so 
much in a world of their own that they do not 
regard the man-made commercial world as 
worth elevating. 

Thousands of men are living in a sphere 
some degrees below the normal. They have 
been surrounded from the beginning with in- 
fluences that obliterate all the higher facul- 
ties of the mind. 

It has taken woman some centuries to rise 
to power, but the work is only half done. 
Never can the commercial instinct and the in- 
tellectual ideal be made to harmonize. The 
two spheres of consciousness are totally dis- 
tinct. 



PSYCHO-PHONE MESSAGES 39 

The modern intellect has been organized 
without considering the moral meaning of its 
activity. This has caused the delusion that 
the crowning glory of European culture is the 
dreadnaught. Ninety per cent of all modern 
inventions are for bodily destruction or bodily 
comfort. While the body lolls in luxury, the 
spirit is soused in lethargy. 

As Ouspensky says, we have created two 
lives — one material, the other spiritual. I be- 
lieve this is owing to the fact that man is liv- 
ing and working in the material and woman 
in the spiritual. In other words, she is carry- 
ing her own responsibilities on one shoulder 
and man's baneful burdens on the other. The 
figure of Atlas holding up the Globe should 
be changed to that of a female. 

One would think that in these days, when 
psychology is taught even to children, that a 
man who has lived forty years in the world of 
action would know better than to boast of his 
eternal activities. The word "busy" has 
grown to be a veritable fetish with thousands 
who have little or nothing to do. The truth is, 
most men are not half as busy as they seem 
and not more than a fourth as wise as they 
look. 



40 PSYCHO-PHONE MESSAGES 

We have to find out by exact analysis just 
what incentive lies behind people's actions. 
What makes the distinction is the quality of 
our acts. Everything in the material and the 
spiritual worlds is judged according to qual- 
ity. Gold, diamonds, clothes, bricks, music, 
poetry, literature, are adjudged, in the last 
resort, on the basis of intrinsic value. When 
people are engaged in pursuits for the sake 
of money the results will be on a plane with 
the quality of the incentive. 

In the work done by women in the past fifty 
years in this country, the incentive has been 
of a higher quality than that shown by men. 

While men introduced a coarse realism into 
the novel, women saved the situation by new 
ideals. I do not think there would be much 
left worth reading today but for woman's 
taste and judgment. 

In the world of intellect and emotion things 
hang together. A low plane of intellect will 
produce low impulses. The more we know the 
greater our control of the different sense or- 
gans. Nothing can happen without a corres- 
ponding cause behind it. 



PSYCHO-PHONE MESSAGES 41 

The hysteria so common at great political 
conventions is caused by the exceedingly 
limited intelligence of the managers and di- 
rectors who labor under the illusion that blind 
impulse is tantamount to vision. In other 
words, where the critical faculties are not de- 
veloped anything can happen. And it is not 
difficult to predict that when political conven- 
tions are swayed by hysterical temperaments 
the authority at the White House will have 
all he can do to steer the Ship of State 
through the troubled waters of impulse and 
confusion. 

There is a will to power that is blind. There 
is another will to power that brings the high- 
er emotions to bear on the lower impulses, 
controls and directs the organs of sense. 

The people who elect a President are the 
ones who will influence his actions. And when 
we talk about a President being a good man 
for business we are compelled to seek for the 
reason behind the statement. 

If finance lands a President at the White 
House, women, children, teachers and phil- 
osophers must shift for themselves, since the 
supreme test lies in function, and not in man- 



42 PSYCHO-PHONE MESSAGES 

ners, words and looks. And finance means 
finesse. 

Do not expect great innovations at the Capi- 
tol until a strong woman takes her seat at 
the White House; and by this I do not mean 
one of Barnum's bearded ladies. 

Conservatism is a good thing when it is 
coupled with vision and judgment, but bear 
in mind that monotony and mediocrity start 
in the same groove, run at the same pace and 
arrive at the same grave. 



BENJAMIN FRANKLIN 

There is but one mark of patriotism and 
that is vigilance and enthusiasm. The cause 
of your trouble is the sincerity with which 
your foes think and act and the lukewarm 
sentiment shown by Americans. The reason 
is to be found in the comfort and luxury of 
the present day compared with the pioneer 
sacrifices of your fathers and grandfathers. 
Your opponents are vindictive as well as vigi- 
lant. They mean what they say and do what 
they will. They are working as individuals, 
as well as in groups and parties, but Ameri- 
cans who inherited the land with liberty are 
exchanging both for the license of the maw. 

When school teachers and farm hands are 
permitted to leave the country for the city, 
the end is not so far off as your sophisticated 
solons of the State Capitols would lead you 
to suppose. 

I once stated that three movings equal one 
fire, and I can say now that the lack of teach- 
ers and farm hands has resulted in a damage 



44 PSYCHO-PHONE MESSAGES 

equal to one revolution. No calamity comes 
and goes single handed. The world, the flesh 
and the devil are a triumvirate bound to- 
gether by ties of consanguinity. Your school 
teachers are passing over to the world, your 
farm laborers to the flesh, and your ministers 
to the devil. 

You are browsing on the stubble. One de- 
linquency involves another, and eventually 
the monetary capital of the nation may be 
reduced to that of France. The nation will 
awake one day to the disillusioning fact that 
peace and progress cannot be gauged by com- 
mercial prosperity alone. For without food 
what avails your steel, your oil and your 
gold? 

If you could witness the mortification poor 
Andrew Carnegie is now undergoing because 
of his lack of vision, you would have a lesson 
not soon forgotten. He built libraries but fur- 
nished no books to fill them. It was like build- 
ing houses without windows. When leading 
business men commit such folly what can 
you expect of the nation at large? 

The three things most needed by the peo- 
ple are food, raiment and shelter. The next 



PSYCHO-PHONE MESSAGES 45 

three are instruction, religion and discipline. 
Liberty is a privilege; it comes after all the 
others. The individual has no rights inimical 
to those of the collective conscience. 

Until you learn this fundamental maxim, 
all your knowledge will prove hut a sounding 
brass and a tinkling cymbal. 

The nations are rattling over the cobble 
stones of bankruptcy on a buckboard of com- 
promise, on the high road to revolution. 



JOHN MARSHALL 

(The Expounder of the Constitution) 

Recorded October, 1920 

Some recent decisions of the Supreme 
Court of the United States are, more than 
any other factor, calculated to develop and 
foster an element of national unrest. Its de- 
liberations are beyond the intelligence of 
many and above the interests of the major- 
ity. Its psychology is that of a divorce be- 
tween capital and labor. Its rulings remind 
me of what transpired in England early in 
the nineteenth century. 

Many who were not socialists are beginning 
to turn from the older order, imbued with 
the feeling that nothing could happen in the 
future worse for the country at large than 
the conditions that are being endured in the 
present. 

A revolution arrives after a series of con- 
nected events which exhausts the patience 
of the public, and events are moving with in- 
tensity as well as rapidity. 



DANIEL WEBSTER 

You will search the pages of history in vain 
without finding a parallel to present condi- 
tions. 

The war gave Bohemia her freedom ; at the 
same time it licensed a bohemian poet to 
keep Italy stewing in her own juice, a bohe- 
mian journalist from New York to direct af- 
fairs in Moscow, and a bohemian socialist 
from Switzerland to rule over Russia. 

Added to this a fashionable ladies' pianist 
has tried his hand, or should I say fingers, 
in the science of unfurling the sails of Po- 
land's new Ship of State, while shop-keepers 
direct affairs in Germany and pusilanimous 
politicians keep the people of America in a 
state of tepid trepidation and flatulent tur- 
moil. Can you wonder that the country is be- 
ing hypnotized by the sight of so many can- 
tankerous cataleptics? 

Macbeth declared he had waded in so far 
that returning would be as perilous as going 



48 PSYCHO-PHONE MESSAGES 

on. Nothing will move them until they are 
swamped by the high tide of reaction and 
flung as flotsam on the rocks of a stormy op- 
portunism. 

A new Damocles has a sword suspended 
over the National Capitol, and liberty hangs 
to the hinges of the Constitution by a hair. 



OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES 

While a few people are ready to return to 
first principles, many are giving expressions 
to Garden of Eden proclivities. But instead 
of the old Eve, you have the new Amazon; 
instead of the old serpent, copperheads in 
Congress; instead of the old Adam, fresh 
brands of bluebeards. 

Agreeable to the apple of the new Adam's 
eye and the fruitarian diet of the new Eden, 
some ladies have adopted the fig-leaf stand- 
ard. But let that pass for the moment, al- 
ways bearing in mind that he who loses his 
sense of humor loses his equilibrium. 

Millions of people are dancing their legs 
oif to keep their heads on. 

Providence is wiser than the moralists. 

There was a way out of the trenches and 
there is a way out of the pessimism develop- 
ed by the dying dispensation. It is not so 
much a question of keeping your powder dry 
as it is of keeping your v/its from congealing. 



50 PSYCHO-PHONE MESSAGES 

Beware of nebulous notions and theories. 
Uncanny kinks lead tG calamitous brain 
storms. A stitch in the side saves nine — kicks 
behind the solar plexus. 



BENJAMIN WADE 
(Late Governor of Ohio — U. S. Senator) 

Viewed in the light that shines on the 
White House, there is no difference between 
a man from Ohio and a gentleman from In- 
diana. 

Men from the pumpkin pie districts think 
and feel alike, judging world politics by the 
yard-stick method that prevailed in their vil- 
lages when they were young men. They are 
not always aware that political ruts cause so- 
cial ructions. 

The all-wool-and-a-yard-wide politician was 
home-spun and honestly patriotic, but what 
you need is a home-spun thinker whose vision 
has got beyond the yard-stick measure and 
can take in the whole world. 

An old-school president, at this juncture, 
will have little more authority than a Congo 
king would have at a conference of jurists in 
Paris. 



52 PSYCHO-PHONE MESSAGES 

Has anyone taken the trouble to find out 
just what distinguishes the minority from 
the majority? 

While the home-spun politician was eating 
cookies and buckwheat cakes made by his 
mother in the Middle West, some millions in 
New York, Chicago, Cleveland, and other for- 
eign centers, were partaking of wienerwurst, 
sauerkraut, Swiss cheese and rye bread, and 
clinking beer glasses, according to the cus- 
tom of Continental Europe. 

If we say that a statesman represents 
Americanism, the question arises what kind 
of Americanism? The Yankee, the Southern- 
er, each had his place in the political econ- 
omy of America from 1776 to the Emancipa- 
tion Proclamation in 1863, and even up to the 
Cleveland Administration, after which con- 
ditions began to change with startling rap- 
idity, when the children born of foreign pa- 
rents were beginning to come of age and the 
European ferment began to leaven the lumps 
of sectional dough. 

The man who occupies the White House in 
1921 should take Time by the forelock and 
the profiteer with the padlock, know how to 



PSYCHO-PHONE MESSAGES 53 

translate "Es ist verboten" into Russian, and 
say, "Get thee behind me, Satan," in Es- 
peranto. 

If honesty , alone, is the best and only pol- 
icy, our country would be safe, but honesty 
is only one of the qualities necessary in these 
days to carry a President through the mazes 
of a complex administration. Honesty does 
not always imply clear vision or even ordi- 
nary common sense. The faculties of diplo- 
matic tact and political judgment are infinite- 
ly more important, and experience still more 
so. 

In America the roles enacted by profes- 
sional politicians remind one of a masquerade 
where everyone is trying to penetrate be- 
hind the masks and guessing is the rule. If 
in this heterogeneous ball-room you slap your 
partner on the back, you may elicit a grunt 
from a grouchy bolshevik or a groan from a 
disgruntled "bohemian." 

And yet Congress enacts laws for Ameri- 
cans who understand no dialect but their own 
and who have to engage interpreters when 
they visit Paris. How many wealthy Ameri- 
cans realize that these United States have 



54 PSYCHO-PHONE MESSAGES 

outgrown the cookie era, the buckwheat pan- 
cake era, the corn cob era, the wooden nut- 
meg era, and arrived at the rcot-hog-or-die 
era? 

Young America today no more resembles 
the young America of thirty years ago than 
a butterfly resembles a caterpillar. Young 
men and women are sixty per cent cosmopoli- 
tan and forty per cent rebel. 

During the next five years the number of 
young people who will insist on thinking for 
themselves will increase two-fold, because in 
that time many thousands of children born 
of foreign parents in America will have be- 
come mature enough to have fixed upon some 
sort of ideal. 

Congress will realize the situation when it 
is too late for regrets to be of any service. 
Which calls to mind a story apropos of 
this pressing subject: A landlady, having no 
means of obtaining meat for her boarders, 
made a stew out of a litter of kittens. The 
truth became known in a day or two. One of 
the boarders said the very thought made her 
sick, to which the landlady replied : "Feeling 
sick won't do no good; them kittens has all 
been digested." 



DON PIATT 

(Late Editor of "The Capital," Washing- 
ton, D. C.) 

Where are the debaters whose rapier 
tongues ripped up the rag dolls of Congress 
and kept the floor of the House supplied with 
fresh saw-dust, whose fantastic fencing and 
heart-piercing thrusts were the delight of 
the gallery and the terror of fire eaters. Gone, 
gone where the woodbine twineth. What 
went they out for to see? A reed shaken by 
the wind? There is a difference in reeds. 
Tom Reed of Maine shook the House, but the 
House never shook him. What were his fa- 
vorite drinks? There was plenty to choose 
from in the Washington of his day. But note 
the difference between the wit of the Maine 
Reed and that of the Missouri Reed. 

On the other hand, where did Bryan get 
the "cross of gold" inspiration in the old 
days? Did he do it on tannic acid released 



56 PSYCHO-PHONE MESSAGES 

from tea leaves? Who will ever know? One 
thing is certain — he never again rose to the 
same level. 

Is our planet revolving toward a second edi- 
tion of puritanism? Probably. The esprit de 
corps that animated the body politic begins 
to resemble a corpse with the esprit evapor- 
ated. 

The human mind needs moments of exalta- 
tion as well as relaxation. Brilliant results 
are not produced by lukewarm sentiments 
expressed in a voice that lacks enthusiasm. 

Washington is now a resort for celluloid 
cynics and a refuge for asbestos patriots 
whose marmorian snobbery makes me think 
of the ruins of temples abandoned by the 
gods and forgotten by man. 

The great blunder of the prohibitionists 
was made when they condemned beer and 
light wine. Nature abhors abruptness. Pro- 
gress is not made by sudden jerks and vio- 
lent laws passed in a hurry. 

If a few persons living in an obscure vil- 
lage in Ohio can bring about a movement like 
prohibition, the same influence can bring 
about a return of the old Connecticut blue 
laws. 



PSYCHO-PHONE MESSAGES 57 

Violent actions are followed by violent re- 
actions. From this there is no escape. 

The fundamental objection to prohibition, 
as it stands, lies in the cold fact that provin- 
cialism, no matter how sincere, can never 
compete with international common sense 
and cosmopolitan culture. 

Village residents are ignorant of the laws 
that govern society in the most intelligent 
centers of the world. What will be the result 
in the long run? Antagonism between the 
people of the cities and the people of the 
country. 

When they prohibit tobacco, a war of cuss 
words will be followed by a battle of cuspi- 
dors, and the very crows will cuss the cro- 
cuses. 



BENJAMIN DISRAELI 

Some Members of Parliament have lost 
their reason, the majority have lost their 
wits, all are without vision. 

Lloyd George presents the curious specta- 
cle of a man of the people who observes them 
through the glasses of a Welsh Calvinist. He 
is a democrat with the demeanor of a lord, 
a radical who has fallen between the two 
stools of the middle-class and the landed aris- 
tocracy. Nonconformist sentimentality, on 
one hand, and titled wealth on the other, have 
blinded him to the imperative needs of the 
time and the dangers that confront the Em- 
pire. 

The English people of the past twenty 
years have suffered as much from misgov- 
ernment as the Germans and the Russians, 
but they cannot stop the present stream of 
progress by clatter in the House and appeals 
to patriotism. 






PSYCHO-PHONE MESSAGES 59 

For years England has been saddled with 
cabinets composed of professional humorists 
and hum-drum moralists. 

Augustine Birrell was a diluted edition of 
Sydney Smith, and Bonar Law should have 
been a professor of theology in a Presbyterian 
seminary. Sir Edward Carson played the 
role of an unfrocked priest in the service of 
demiurgos. Earl Curzon is a political dere- 
lict whose presence in the Council Chamber 
prevents unity and impedes progress. 

History will record their acts as the most 
amazing in the annals of Great Britain. I see 
nothing for the old order but unconditional 
surrender. The hand-writing on the wall was 
visible in 1909, but no preparation was made 
for the change which is now sweeping the 
country with cyclonic force. 

We, from our side, can do no more than 
utter some words of warning for the few 
who have ears to hear, the tidal wave of 
change not being confined to particular coun- 
tries or regions. 

I, too, when Prime Minister, was blind to 
the reality, having been born and reared in 
an atmosphere as foreign to that of the 



60 PSYCHO-PHONE MESSAGES 

masses as the atmosphere of the Winter Pal- 
ace was foreign to the peasants of Russia. 

We staggered under the load of a wealthy 
and titled upper class. They consumed the 
people's time and imposed infinite misery on 
some millions of toilers, and for these things 
we rewarded the men at the top with fresh 
titles. 

As you know, I led the Conservative Party 
in England for many years, but that Party 
was, and still is, avid for power. 

The Liberal Party was made up of men 
using Nonconformity as an instrument of ad- 
vancement. They placed opportunity above 
the truth, position above principle, power 
above progress. We were all intellectual au- 
tomatons, set in motion by springs wound up 
by leaders who were themselves automatons. 

England goes by machinery. Her very ex- 
istence is mechanical. Now, when a loose 
screw stops the evolution of the wheels, the 
whole nation stops. 

In what way can we be said to excel in 
probity of conduct the people of Ireland? In 
what way are we superior to Irish politi- 
cians? The scandals that occurred in London 



PSYCHO-PHONE MESSAGES 61 

during the war would not have been tolerated 
in Dublin under an Irish Parliament. And 
still England is being led by a Welsh Calvinist, 
opposed by a Scottish humorist who says his 
prayers, backed by Anglican agnostics and 
middle-class dissenters overwhelmed with 
fear. 

We always imitate the French, but while 
we accepted Voltairianism in principle, the 
French had the courage to put it into prac- 
tice. 

While the French became practical pagans 
in 1789, we became practical hypocrites. 

It is this element that has created the mor- 
al indifference of the Anglican Church and 
the intellectual apathy of the so-called Non- 
conformist conscience. This is why there is 
no stability behind the old phraseology, the 
old ceremonials, the old confessions of faith — 
now so many catch-words which the people 
abhor. And this is why the working men find 
it so easy to send their leaders to Parliament. 
For the same reason Russian radicalism is 
certain of a warm welcome on English soil. 

It is true that this hypocrisy is subconsci- 
ous, having had its origin during the French 



62 PSYCHO-PHONE MESSAGES 

Revolution. This renders it far more danger- 
ous because political leaders in England to- 
day are mentally incompetent to realize the 
danger that lies before them. 

We cannot reason with people whose vision 
is dulled by four generations of moral apathy. 
Hence they will continue to "kick against the 
pricks" to the bitter end. There will be strife 
added to strife, confusion to confusion, and 
they, themselves, will invite the drastic 
events which must follow so much stubborn 
resistance to the demands of common jus- 
tice and the progress of civilization. 



PRINCE BISMARCK 
Recorded November 3d, 1920 

When I imposed an indemnity of five bil- 
lion francs on the French people in 1870 we 
knew that the money could and would be 
paid. But there is no parallel between Ger- 
many in 1920 and France in 1870. The Rep- 
arations Commission has only succeeded in 
proving its incompetence. The German dele- 
gates have shown that the Allied war claims 
amount to more than five hundred billion 
marks (gold), which is nearly four thousand 
billions at the present rate of exchange. 

This fantastic sum, one hundred times 
more than France paid to Germany in 1870, 
is expected of a country on the verge of revo- 
lution and chaos. I charge this Commission 
with incompetence, extravagance, luxurious 
living, and claims at once absurd and ridicu- 
lous. 

You punish some of the most dangerous 
criminals by indeterminate sentences, which 



64 PSYCHO-PHONE MESSAGES 

frequently end after a year's imprisonment, 
but you expect to hold the German people in 
financial bondage for more than a generation 
to come because of the criminal blunders of 
less than a hundred individuals. 

I was blinded by material factors at the time 
of my seeming triumphs but now I can see 
some of the things which will never come to 
pass. The French and the English are re- 
peating some of the blunders I made fifty 
years ago. They are counting on conditions 
which will never exist, like a bird sitting on a 
nest of mixed eggs from which the cuckoo 
will eventually oust all the other birds. 

French people are under the illusion that 
Russia will meet the obligations undertaken 
by the late Czar. To expect such a thing 
shows the child-like illusions under which 
French fanatics are living. They are still 
wrapped in the swaddling clothes of politics. 

We committed crimes that have brought 
civilization to the brink of chaos, but we are 
not capable of such naivete. 

The logic of a Frenchman is no better than 
the mysticism of a Russian or the sentimen- 
tality of an Englishman. French people 



PSYCHO-PHONE MESSAGES 65 

learned nothing from the blunders of Napo- 
leon III and the debacle of Sedan. And the 
reason? They have remained provincial while 
the Germans imitated the commercial cos- 
mopolitanism of the English. 

Advice is the cheapest of all things. Never- 
theless, I advise your statesmen to place no 
reliance on sentimental contracts written on 
paper foredoomed to become "scraps." 

I do not hesitate to declare that no agree- 
ment signed since 1913 is worth more than 
the seals. In Europe, leaders and rulers have 
passed from an international game of chess 
to a national gamble with marked cards. 

You have now to deal with an element 
which did not exist in my time. This element 
embraces all factions of the new radicalism, 
no matter in what country or under what 
leader. Some of these elements may unite, 
but they are not going to change. How, then, 
can you undertake to insure the future by 
contracts signed and sealed by elderly gen- 
tlemen with good intentions and poor judg- 
ment? 

The war gave the new factions the long 
wished-for opportunity. They seized it in 



66 PSYCHO-PHONE MESSAGES 

Russia, in Germany, in Poland, in Britain, 
and other countries. But the opportunities 
created by the war are one thing, the oppor- 
tunities of tomorrow will be different, and it 
is this contingency for which your leaders are 
not prepared. You will have to select men of 
vision who will judge events as they arrive, 
without regard to the distant future, which 
belongs to no man. 

One of my greatest mistakes was in sepa- 
rating Protestant Prussia from the interests 
of the Catholics of South Germany. 

The new radicalism is opposed to some 
things which are irrevocably linked with re- 
ligious doctrine. 

Without the Catholic Church all Europe 
would be in the throes of the Commune. The 
principal cause of our disintegration was that 
we sanctioned Protestant flirtation with mod- 
ern materialism. 

France is beginning to see that even a 
weak monarchy is better than a radical gov- 
ernment without a God. 

You may expect a return of the monarchy 
in more than one country. Agnostics and 
Protestants, moved by fear on one side, and 



PSYCHO-PHONE MESSAGES 67 

disgust on the other, will unite for a restora- 
tion as their last hope- There will be a repe- 
tition of historic events. 

Bonaparte was ushered in by the French 
Revolution, and his advent was followed by 
three kings and one emperor. 

The majority treat their rulers as children 
treat their toys: when the novelty wears off 
a change is demanded. 

Political psychology and religious senti- 
ment are not the same thing. Nevertheless, 
they must be considered together. The Ger- 
mans are now awaiting the hour when the in- 
evitable change will be demanded. Events 
take crowns from some heads and place them 
on others. If the ex-Kaiser ever occupies the 
throne again a modern Nero will fiddle 
amidst the ruins of German imperialism, for 
you know he meddled with fiddle strings as 
well as with political wires. 

You think it strange? The impossible is 
always happening. Never lose sight of the 
fact that an organized minority is more for- 
midable than a disorganized majority. Three 
men brought about the coup d'etat that 
placed the outcast Louis Napoleon on the 



68 PSYCHO-PHONE MESSAGES 

throne, one man started the Russian Revo- 
lution, I planned the overthrow of the Second 
Empire with the aid of Count von Moltke. 
The majority put their trust in numbers, but 
the bigger a thing grows the nearer it is to 
disintegration. An autocratic minority ruled 
in Germany, an automatic majority rules in 
France and England. Two men started the 
present rule in Moscow, both of them from 
the outside. 

"God has been merciful to us," said Ca- 
vour, in the Italian Senate, "He has made 
Spain one degree lower than Italy ." God has 
been merciful to Germany, He has made Rus- 
sian communism more abhorrent than Ger- 
man socialism. 

Nothing will be left undone by the French 
government to secure permanent occupation 
of the coal district of the Rhine. 

Conditions will not remain long as they are. 
They are preparing decisive coups in Bava- 
ria, Hanover, Austria and Hungary. New 
combinations will amaze your statesmen and 
diplomats, who are ignorant of the fact that 
changes and upheavals operate in cycles of 
three and seven. What they call chance is the 






PSYCHO-PHONE MESSAGES 69 

working of law. Spiritual forces operate 
through the physical, and nature will take a 
hand in the reactions in Petrograd and Mos- 
cow. Cold, hunger and starvation will dissi- 
pate the hopes of the ruling minority. Un- 
told numbers will be sacrificed. 

During the French Revolution philosophers 
and thinkers were decapitated. In Russia 
such men are killed by hunger, the difference 
being one of method. 

Such conditions will be repeated in differ- 
ent countries until people learn that the spir- 
itual cannot be separated from the material 
without pain and slaughter. 

After all the long-winded conferences and 
shorthand reports nothing is left but a con- 
fusion of blots on the tissue paper of time. 

I may say more on another occasion. 



KENRY WARD BEECHER 

The happy-go-lucky humor of the day is no 
match for the cool calculation of European 
communists. English and American humor- 
ists do for the public what the court jester 
once did for blase kings. 

In the sardonic temper of the Russian rev- 
olutionist, I see a return of the French tem- 
per of 1793. 

Most of the sermons and speeches of the 
time are chameleon in character and tepid in 
feeling. English humorists developed a flag- 
rant cynicism, spotted with a varioloid para- 
dox, while French writers have halted be- 
tween the isolation of the hospital and the in- 
sularity of the home. 

The war brought Anatole France to his 
senses, the last of the Gallic wits, who pos- 
sessed a greater charm than Voltaire with- 
out attaining his universal prestige. Prince 
Bismarck declares that the French have 
learned nothing since their defeat at Sedan. 



PSYCHO-PHONE MESSAGES 71 

Yet French writers have learned more from 
the great war than the writers of any other 
country. 

English humor is meant to entertain a 
public lost in the cynical buffooneries of ma- 
terialism; American humor is meant to 
amuse a public lost in the mazes of extrava- 
gant pleasures and provincial inanities. 

English humor has a certain seal; Ameri- 
can humor a certain mark— -the difference 
between sealing wax and a postage stamp. 
Both aim to till the ghastly gap left by the 
doctrine of evolution since it caught the fancy 
of agnostic freebooters in 1870 — forerunners 
of something grimmer than the Soviet sym- 
bols of a return of puritanism even now 
creeping into view as ivy creeps up the water 
spouts. 

Laughter will vanish, since there will be 
nothing left to laugh at. Dancing will cease, 
for curfew will ring at nine and people will 
begin work at five. 

Remember that all the great modern move- 
ments had an obscure origin. Spiritualism 
began in a country farm-house, Christian 



72 PSYCHO-PHONE MESSAGES 

Science developed out of mediumship, prohi- 
bition was started in a village, woman's suf- 
frage was started by a Quakeress, Theosophy 
began at a farm-house in Vermont, the Sal- 
vation Army was started by a group of ob- 
scure persons. 

The new puritanism will start by a com- 
mittee of persons unknown to the public, 
chosen from the ranks of the Methodists, 
Baptists and Presbyterians. Grim determin- 
ists, they will ignore satire, sarcasm and 
irony, ignore party politics, ignore the oppo- 
sition of luke-warm Christians, form commit- 
tees, in which they will be aided by drastic 
reactions during the period of readjustment 

Centers will soon be formed in Atlanta, 
Nashville, Cleveland, Boston, Hartford, Phila- 
delphia and Washington, D. C. 

What is causing so much crime? Not one, 
but many elements of decadence, all oper- 
ating together, among which I can name rag, 
jazz, high balls, cabarets, free verse, neuro- 
tic art, sentimental optimism, cheap notions 
of progress, neutral sermons, automobilism, 
lack of child discipline, absence of fear 



PSYCHO-PHONE MESSAGES 73 

among people under the age of forty — evils 
which you may apply to all English-speaking 
countries. 

The licence of the cities dominates country 
life and country thought. The city minority 
rules the majority in the country, and it is in 
the country that the reaction will begin. 



JOHN MARSHALL 
(Second Message) 

Many of the smaller nations, instead of 
being content with their liberty, have thrown 
it away for the licence that always goes with 
land grabbing. For a nation is nothing more 
than an individual with a certain amount of 
collective ambition. 

Much of the work of the League of Nations 
will have to be undone. But it will not be un- 
done by any League. The nations will settle 
differences in accordance with the law that 
permits the more powerful to wield control 
commensurate with their geographical and 
intellectual importance. 

All people have rights which ought to be 
respected, but some have privileges as well as 
rights, and the privileged will hold the upper 
hand as long as intelligence takes precedence 
of illiteracy, energy dominates over lethargy, 
and the power of organized numbers rules 
over minorities. 



PSYCHO-PHONE MESSAGES 75 

Your statesmen and your mediators will 
have to learn the distinction between rights 
and privileges. All are supposed to possess 
common rights under the common law, but 
it is wisdom, supported by poise and power, 
that constitutes privilege. David and Solo- 
mon were privleged. So were Alfred the 
Great, Washington and Lincoln. 

A nation is temperamental like an individ- 
ual. The temperament may be vascillating or 
it may be stolid; it may be logical or it may 
be commercial; or a combination of the Saxon 
and the Celt. 

The nations that will hold the balance of 
power in the future will be the ones with the 
most will and poise, backed by number. 
Riches, alone, will not save Wealth did not 
save Germany from disaster, nor did it help 
Nopoleon III to ward off the Prussian inva- 
sion in 1870. Wealth invites invasion and 
conquest. This is why England and America 
will now be the principal target for the am- 
bitious and the discontented. This is why 
Japan seeks a firm foothold in China, and the 
Russians an entrance to India through Persia. 



76 PSYCHO-PHONE MESSAGES 

Without the prospects of loot there would 
be no war. When ambition and glory lure a 
nation on, the desire for loot supplies the mo- 
tor force. When hunger forces a people to in- 
vade a nation, loot becomes a necessity. 

What the wealthy of every nation refuse 
to understand, or even to consider, is that ma- 
terial force engenders vanity, individualism, 
rivalry and envy. All manifestations of force 
contain an element of disintegration. The 
type of a nation will always represent the pol- 
icy and the trend of the nation. 

The supreme blunder of the Peace Confer- 
ence was made when the delegates, with 
Mr. Wilson at their head, refused to face the 
fact that no nation can rise above the ideals 
and idiosyncrasies of the national tempera- 
ment, and that sudden liberation from re- 
straint is as dangerous for a country as it is 
for an individual. 

There is but one step between liberty and 
licence, and that step meant pandemonium 
for all classes in Russia. For other peoples it 
may mean political bondage and the total loss 
of a national spirit. For the Hindoos it will 
mean civil wars between the different native 



PSYCHO-PHONE MESSAGES 77 

rulers, for China it has meant a series of re- 
volutions and counter revolutions which may 
have to be suppressed by the drastic hand of 
a Japanese Bonaparte. 

The League Conference at Versailles took 
no account of the working of natural law. 
Sentimentality was the key-note of Mr. Wil- 
son's idealism, and commercial expansion the 
dominant idea of his opponents. 

As for religion exerting any fundamental 
influence for peace and right thinking, it 
caused Protestants to fight Protestants and 
Catholics to fight Catholics, while German 
and Austrian cardinals did all in their power 
to aid in the invasion and conquest of Belgium 
and France, on one hand, and Italy, the 
stronghold of the Papal See, on the other; 
and all this in the face of the statement of 
the Kaiser that Catholicism must be destroy- 
ed. Nothing like it has been known since the 
dawn of Christianity. 

The only apparent reason for the quies- 
cent attitude of some of the smaller nations 
is that they are without the material means 
of waging war on their neighbors. 



78 PSYCHO-PHONE MESSAGES 

Just as long as politicians are impelled by 
self-interest there will be found nations that 
will have to use force for the suppression of 
licence and the curtailment of liberty. In ev- 
ery country the people are getting what their 
thoughts and deeds create for them. 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

Events come and go in cycles — there is a 
beginning, a middle and an end. The League 
of Nations had a beginning and it will have 
an end. But what kind of an end? Will it be 
one of victory or one of ignominy? 

The two fatal blunders of the Kaiser and 
his cohorts consisted in the delusion that 
England could not raise, equip and transport a 
body of troops sufficient to offer adequate re- 
sistance to the invaders of France in con- 
junction with the French and Belgian armies, 
and that America could not or would not join 
the European Allies. 

At the present juncture the inimical forces, 
both in continental Europe and in America, 
are repeating the old blunders under fresh 
conditions. 

History is a repetition of the old tunes with 
new variations. Just now the fireworks of 
sophistry and rhetoric drown out the familiar 
tune and what is heard is the buzz-saw of 
political machinery. 



80 PSYCHO-PHONE MESSAGES 

Hyenas are gnawing the bones left by the 
lion rampant of Czardom; and Siberia, the 
remnant, is being consumed by jackals from 
Japan. It remains to be seen how long voters 
with American pedigrees will be influenced 
by demagogues who would induce them to 
part with their birthright for a mess of pot- 
tage burnt on the bottom. 

The longer you wink at anarchy in Europe 
the greater will be the menace of social chaos 
at home. The worship of shibboleths cannot 
be kept up beyond a point where the majority 
grow tired of hocus-pocus politics and 
academical agnosticism. 

There should be harmony of interests in 
dealing with the people of Mexico, from whom 
you have much to learn in many ways. 

The Obregon Government should be recog- 
nized at Washington and immediate steps 
taken to insure cordial relations between the 
two countries. 

The City of Mexico is a capital with a great 
future. 

You are about to pass through a period of 
great confusion. Warnings have been given 
but not heeded. Unless you cease to theorize, 



PSYCHO-PHONE MESSAGES 81 

and propagate a spirit of justice and judg- 
ment, the near future will develop something 
more than storms in the blue china teapots of 
diplomacy. 



ROBERT G. INGERSOLL 

Washington needs a breaker of images. 

The pedestrian sauntering down Pennsyl- 
vania Avenue cannot but note the hefty Han- 
cock on horseback, looking as if he had just 
left a meeting of ward politicians, and, in an- 
other part of the city, McCIellan, the Beau 
Brummel of the Civil War, on a charger, snif- 
fing the smoke of battle from a safe distance, 
and others whose names are writ in water but 
whose effigies remain in bronze. 

To the scrap heap with these, and in their 
places erect memorials for the women, who 
did as much for America as Joan of Arc did 
for France, the intrepid pioneers of their 
race, the prophetic patriots of the nineteenth 
century — Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Lucretia 
Mott and Susan B. Anthony. 

It would take a Lincoln Memorial to depict 
their serenity, a National Capitol to symbol- 
ize their nobility, a Washington Monument 
to typify the towering height of their 
achievement and the scope and clarity of their 
vision. 



STEPHEN A. DOUGLAS 

A war between America and England 
would fill your homes with desolation and 
bring ruin to the whole country. Do your sins 
of omission merit such a punishment? I am 
here to tell you what to expect if such a hur- 
ricane of disaster ever sweeps the two coun- 
tries. 

Millions of people are under the impression 
that the United States can act independently 
of the conditions prevailing in the other great 
nations. This suggestion, coming, as it did, 
from a professional joker in England, has met 
with eager response from revolutionary emis- 
saries now in your midst, supported by politi- 
cal fillibusters who are masking the truth. 

If England ever starts such a war she will 
lose India. Her direction of the reins of civili- 
zation in many quarters of the world would 
cease on the day hostilities began. But I am 
speaking for America. 



84 PSYCHO-PHONE MESSAGES 

A war with England would Russianize the 
United States within three months. Even if 
the navy could keep the enemy at a safe dis- 
tance the destructive forces at home would 
loot the principal cities and spread terror 
from ocean to ocean. 

The first to lose in such an upheaval would 
be the wealthy propagandists of disorder and 
violence, who, living in security now, would 
be hurled with destructive force against the 
weapons of their own creation. 



GENERAL BENJAMIN H. GRIERSON 

Late Commander of the Military Depart- 
ment of Southern California, Arizona 
and New Mexico 

In 1914 western civilization was threatened 
by a military autocracy centralized at Berlin. 
Europe is now threatened by a communistic 
tyranny centralized at Moscow and by an 
autocratic aristocracy centered in Japan, anti- 
Christian, anti-democratic, anti-American. 
You may call it fate or destiny, it matters not 
so long as you know what the signs and por- 
tents are. 

We can see what is going on in the navy 
yards of the Nipponese Empire. We have 
noted the strenuous efforts put forth in naval 
preparations there. 

A Japanese Bonaparte will soon dominate 
China and prevent Christian propaganda 
throughout Asia. I could give you the dates 
fixed for certain maneuvers and events in 
connection with Japanese ambitions relating 



86 PSYCHO-PHONE MESSAGES 

to America, but they could change the dates. 
Suffice it to say they are making ready as 
fast as possible, much faster than many in 
this country could be made to believe. When 
the decisive moment arrives for action it will 
come suddenly, like the invasion of Belgium 
by the Germans. 

Here are some of their expectations: — 

The invasion of the coast of Mexico and a 
coalition of Japanese forces with some mili- 
tary faction in Mexico likely to be of practical 
aid, the bombing of American cities on the 
Pacific Coast from the air, virtual cessation 
of communication between certain sections 
east of the Rocky Mountains and California, 
brought about not so much by physical 
means as by revolutionary influences. They 
are counting on a Soviet revolution east of 
the Rockies while they are gaining a foothold 
in California. 

One of their first attempts would be to 
bomb the railway passes in the Cascades and 
the Sierra Nevadas. 

General Grant has warned you in regard 
to the Panama Canal and other points that 
need immediate attention. Millions would be 



PSYCHO-PHONE MESSAGES 87 

alarmed if they could realize how much the 
Government at Washington resembles the 
British Government just before the German 
descent into Belgium. Are they waiting un- 
til they can spy the enemy through field 
glasses? 

I could give a map of the plans of approach 
of the Japanese navy, intended to operate in 
separate units, but it would do no good. They 
are ready to change their tactics at any time, 
and have done so more than once. 

Let me add that the bellicose attitude of 
the war party in Japan is such that a war be- 
tween England and America would be hailed 
as a symbol of their divine destiny. 

Do not be surprised when I say that they 
proclaim the end of Christian civilization was 
reached when the Anglo-Saxons took posses- 
sion of the Pacific Coast. 

In the Far East, British domination at- 
tained its zenith in India; in America, Anglo- 
Saxon influence attained its limit in Cali- 
fornia. The possession of the Pacific Coast 
of North America is, therefore, the limit for 
the dominant white race. The tocsin has 



88 PSYCHO-PHONE MESSAGES 

sounded for a Japanese avatar who will unify 
the political, commercial and religious forces 
of Japan and China, give the coup de grace 
to a tottering civilization and dominate the 
world. So do they reason and preach. 









ALEXANDER HAMILTON 

What do the clouds on the social horizon 
predict? Is Nature a book of fate? If so, is 
it sealed or open? Whoever understands the 
political actions of the past can foresee the 
reactions of the future. 

Human nature is always the same. 

The two things brought to the surface by 
great upheavals are extreme virtues and ex- 
treme vices. The virtue of self sacrifice, on 
the one hand, the vice of self interest on the 
other. Vice is flexible, cunning, adaptable. 

You are living at a time when profiteers 
amaze by their cynical audacity, but profit- 
eers have always existed. Before the war the 
nobles of Russia and Germany were profiteers 
in landed privileges and governmental per- 
quisites. The tillers of the soil were free in 
name, serfs in practice. In England two or 
three hundred lords and peers possess the 
land. In America food profiteering began dur- 
ing the Civil War. This national vice has 
never been attacked at the roots. 






90 PSYCHO-PHONE MESSAGES 

Your age is characterized by a high level 
of predatory ability and a low level of pro- 
phetic visibility. 

The old hackneyed phrase, "This is a free 
country," has been applied in varying degrees 
according to the caprice of the individual with 
the most aggressive will. 

New words, definitions, excuses, have been 
invented to meet the new conditions, but of 
all the words yet brought into use, "camou- 
flage" is the only one that covers the cynical 
effrontery of predatory hypocrisy. It is a 
voc&ble of universal utility. It applies to the 
cock-pits of commerce as well as to the arena 
of bull and bear politics. 

It depicts a Hindoo patience in the pulpit 
and a Hoodoo palsy in the pews. 

The word "democracy" itself is the stripes 
painted* on the sides of the old Ship of State 
in her zig-zag course to elude the torpedoes of 
the proletarian submarines. 

A capitalistic profiteer is a high brow op- 
timist who lives by the sweat of the low brow 
pessimist. The stretching process will cease 
suddenly like the snapping of a rubber string 
stretched beyond the limit. 



PSYCHO-PHONE MESSAGES 91 

The masses without a voice always find ar- 
ticulation in the unlooked-for man, the un- 
looked-for group. 

The people without a mouthpiece are a mob, 
and no mob can run itself for more than a 
few days. It is the initiated who lead, and 
leadership requires time, patience, judgment. 

In the world of genius there are no up- 
starts. 

The great leader never rises suddenly. 
Bonaparte was a military graduate, Grant 
was a product of West Point, Lincoln was 
thirty years preparing for the Presidency, 
Lenine spent twenty years in the study of 
economics. All countries have the same ex- 
perience. 

Voltaire endowed the middle classes of 
France with a voice, united the disaffected of 
all classes, and peppered their indignation 
with pungent epigrams. He created an intel- 
lectual garden for lovers of liberty, and from 
the realm of the mind flung the thorns of 
ridicule in the face of titled imbeciles and 
crowned the heads of scholars with laurel. 



92 PSYCHO-PHONE MESSAGES 

The people of France were washed by Louis 
XIV, wrung by Louis XV, and dried in the 
back yard of tyrannical economics by Louis 
XVI. 

But it was the orators and pamphleteers 
who ironed out the frills and furbelows of the 
old order. 

Statistical facts may convince but they do 
not compel. Who knows how the French Rev- 
olution would have ended had Mirabeau, ora- 
tor of the great and solemn days, survived to 
put into action the idealism of Rousseau? In- 
tellect alone never passes the halfway house. 
When intellect, reason and emotion are fused 
in one, the summit of achievement is at- 
tained. 



PHILLIPS BROOKS 

The time for discipline is approaching. 
Happy are those who, under Divine direction, 
consent to be led, for, in the words of Quin- 
tilian: — Nulla poena est nisi invito, or as 
Seneca expressed it, Fata volentum ducunt, 
involentem trahunt, — those who refuse will 
be dragged. 

You must in some manner experience the 
ordeals common to other peoples, and you 
have seen from a distance what has over- 
taken many cities and nations, the inhabi- 
tants of which felt themselves as fixed as the 
rocks in the soil. Yet, all that is happening 
is in harmony with Divine law. You will find 
it in Isaiah and Jeremiah. The repetition is 
inevitable except for those who possess vis- 
ion. 

The time for appeals is past. 

"The earth mourneth and f adeth away, the 
world languisheth and fadeth, the haughty 
people of the world do languish." 



94 PSYCHO-PHONE MESSAGES 

"When thou shalt cease to spoil, thou shaH 
be spoiled, and when thou shalt make an end 
to deal treacherously, they shall deal treach- 
erously with thee." 

Are the people astonished? Let them mar- 
vel at their own willfulness. 

"The kings of the earth and all the inhabi- 
tants of the world would not have believed 
that the adversary and the enemy should 
have entered into the gates of Jerusalem." 

Titus, with his army, destroyed the Holy 
City. The enemy entered the gates from 
without but your adversaries have long been 
entrenched within. 

Mammon is heavily laden and will fall 
from the top. Material power is volatile. 

In the day of trial, the retainer and the 
hireling will seek a refuge, every man for 
himself. They will melt like the wax image 
before the heat of the furnace. On that day 
humility will be as a precious gift and pov- 
erty as a peace offering. 

Blessed is he who uses the spade and the 
hoe, for by the sweat of his brow he shall eat 
the bread of security. 






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